Nicholas Oyugi Odhiambo

Ham's Sin and Noah's Curse and Blessing Utterances: a Critique of Current Views Nicholas Oyugi Odhiambo

The thesis of this book is threefold. First, contrary to the increasingly popular understanding that the nature of Ham's offense was sexual, we argue that this offense was nonsexual, despite the presence of the phrase ("to see the nakedness of") in Genesis 9:22. More specifically, Ham's offense had less to do with seeing his father naked-the seeing was accidental. Rather, his fault lay with his choice to disclose to his brothers what he had seen as opposed to covering the nakedness of his father. Second, the most probable fulfillment of the Noah's curse is (1) the servitude of the Gibeonites; (2) the enslavement of the Canaanites following the conquest; or (3) the dominance of Rome and Greece over Tyre and Carthage, respectively. The events or phenomena least associated with the curse, in our view, are the following: (1) the service of the four kings in Genesis 14 under Chedorlaomer and the king of Tidal; (2) the subjection of the Egyptians and Babylonians by the Persians; (3) the forced corvée service of the Egyptians by Pharaoh; (4) the triumph of Israel over Egypt during the Exodus; (5) the enslavement of the Africans; and (6) the African's dark skin color. Third, whereas none of the proposals offered in regards to the phrase ("let him dwell in the tents of Shem") correlate well with the exegesis of the blessing utterance, we did find a viable candidate among the proposals related to the enlargement of Japheth, viz "geographical expansion"